How Child Like Fights Over Budgets Are Affecting And Will Continue To Affect The World Economy If Not Stopped

Hey everyone, as always, thanks for swinging by! I’m Josh, the guy behind Monday Money! Now, I’ve given you all some tips on things you can do to help your financial situation over several articles here, but today, we’re going to do things a little bit differently. Today, I might piss a few people off, but there are some things that have to be said about what is going on. So, without further ado, here goes nothing!

First off, I want to say I am a proud U.S. Citizen. I love my country, the people in it, and the general feeling of safety I have here. Now, that you know how I feel on that front, I’ve gotta say that I’m losing faith that this great country will continue to thrive as it has for so long. This government shutdown, could be the beginning the end financially for the U.S., our allies, and our foes. It has already started to affect us and will continue to do so if we as a whole don’t do something to fix it!

Why Is The U.S. Government Shutdown Happening?

The United States Government is built up of two primary parties, republicans and democrats. The United States President is a democrat and the majority leaders of Congress are republican. Republican and Democratic views have always been different, but over the past few decades, their views have become further and further apart.

Congress is charged with paying bills, but they don’t agree with how the president is running the country. When it comes time to create a budget and make changes to the debt ceiling, congress must do so and send the results to the President to sign off on. Of course this is a very short explanation of their incredibly detailed jobs.

Because the vast majority of those in Congress don’t like what the President is doing, they are not submitting budget propositions to fund our country until he changes the way he is running the country. Thus leads to the political dogfight the entire world is watching today.

The bottom line is this. Congress and the President don’t agree. So, instead of sitting down to talk it out like civil leaders of a country, they decide to hash it out like 12 year old boys on a political play ground. Instead of getting things done through negotiations, they are meeting in separate rooms and trying to come up with a way to harm the other party. The sad part is, it is obvious that neither party actually cares about working class U.S. citizens.

How Stupid Arguments In Congress Are Slowing Down Progress During The Shutdown!

It’s sickening to even write this, but we should all know. We had an argument on Congress about shutting down the house gym. Are you freaking kidding me? It’s OK to shut down the parts of the government that do things like subsidize nutritious meals for children and families, but heaven forbid we shut down the gym! This is legitimately how stupid these Congress cat fights are in the midst of a Government Shutdown!

How The Government Shutdown Affects Working Class U.S. Citizens Financially

I want to start this one out by saying to the 800,000 government employees that are laid off as a result of this political pissing match that I’m sorry! I’m sorry that the government that I and my fellow Americans voted into office are so stupid they can’t keep you employed. I didn’t vote for all of them, but I voted for some and they are all to blame. So, I am personally sorry!

Now, 800,000 people being laid off is a big deal. This means that close to a million people will be getting unemployment. Aside from what this idiotic move will cost the United States, these laid off government employees will only be receiving a small percentage of what they earned until the problem is solved or they find work. That’s a lot of money not making it into our economy folks!

How The Government Shutdown Affects Working Class Citizens Of U.S. Allies

Our country trades quite a bit of merchandise to bring money into it’s economy and that requires friends. However, this government shutdown isn’t going to help us keep any of the friends we’ve made, even on a working class citizen level. As a matter of fact, it’s going to really piss off Asian consumers that rely on our seafood for an important holiday season.

One of the branches of the government that was shut down is a branch that controls fishing for crab in the Bering Sea. They control things like the amount of crabs fishermen are allowed to take out of the ocean. Without knowing how many they can take, they can’t fish at all. Aside from several more laid off consumers, we now have no product to export. This is perfect timing too, crab is at it’s peak season and will be in it’s highest demand during an Asian holiday season that is coming next month! That means higher prices for our Asian friends for their holiday festivities!

Thinking about how small things like this affect masses of working class citizens throughout the world, how many of our friends in other countries being affected? Well, we will only find that out after the Congress catfight is over!

How This Affects Investments And The Market

The United States dollar is the dollar that the world market is based on. Now, I’m no financial advisor, but I’m not stupid. If the U.S. dollar for some reason couldn’t be printed, it would lead to incredible amounts of defaulted investments. This is a big deal. The sad part is, this is how serious of a matter we have people fighting over gym during a shutdown!

That being said, investments are based on trust. If trust in the U.S. Government is lost, investments slow down, markets tumble, and we end up in the new age Great Depression! As smart investors, you already know this. If our elected government was as smart as they portrayed themselves to be during campaign season, they would know it too! That being said, investors are losing trust in our government as the clock ticks. If this doesn’t get worked out, it can lead to investors pulling money out of them market and not wanting to put it back in!

We Need To Pull Together To Stop All Of This

For those of you in the U.S., you should be calling, writing or tweeting Congress and telling them that they will all be looking for new jobs come election time if they can’t grow up and do their jobs. We should all write the President and tell him how disgusting this entire thing is, how his lack of leadership is affecting not only you, but your fellow citizens worldwide! Those of you in other countries should contact the same people to let them know how disgusted you are by their choices and how sorry you are for the embarrassed Americans watching them fight. If they are not smart enough to make the right decisions, we need to force them to!

My Final Thoughts On The Government Shutdown

This shutdown is stupid. The bottom line is, it’s not a “Budget Reform” hat we need! It’s a “Government Reform”. Look I’m not republican, I’m not democrat, I’m Josh! Why are we voting based on the color and type of animal depicted in the background of slogans? A bi-partisan government doesn’t work, and we’re watching as the problems unfold! I’m a proud U.S. citizen. Like I said, I am proud of the land and it’s people. That being said, I am sickened by it’s government.

Joshua Rodriguez is the owner and founder of CNA Finance. He is also a partner here at Modest Money. His analysis has been featured on Investing.com, Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance, Google News, and many others. To connect with Joshua, follow him on Twitter @CNAFinance.

26 Comments

Highly insightful posts as always Josh! While I don’t have a lot of knowledge on the matter, I really tend to think that politicians are ruining the country by focusing more on pulling the opposition down than actually running the country. The sad part is that it is not isolated in the US, India is also being tormented with political battles and the country’s fate has been left on its own. It’s such a shame

Everyone knows that the whole show is bullshit. Don’t buy into the media hype that a disaster is coming because of Congress.

Yes, they ARE hurting the small guy, everyone gets that. The reality is that this country has a HUGE spending problem that needs to be addressed. The country is like a heroin addict, and sooner or later it is going to have to face up to that fact. The longer we put off dealing with this issue in a serious manner the worse the problem is going to get.

I think it’s better to take pain now vs. getting our heads cut off if we keep kicking the can down the road. In my view this isn’t a simple problem of Congress not agreeing with the President, it’s a question of do we deal with the issues now or leave it for the next guy. What do you think we should do?

I completely agree. The real problem here is over the debt ceiling, not the budget. The debt ceiling needs to be raised to accomodate another $1 trillion in annual deficits – this year and next. So it’s over permission to add another @ trillion to the debt. So what does Congress do? They manufacture a budget “crisis” that does nothing to fix or even address the real problem, and distract the citizenry with this side show. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Hey Money Ahoy, thanks for swinging by and leaving such an insightful comment! I agree with you. We really should just pick up the can instead of kicking it down the road!

Kevin, thanks for swinging by! Your absolutely correct. The big question is, have you sent a letter to congress or the president to let them know that we understand they are manufacturing a crisis and we don’t agree with it?

Hey Kim, I’m with you! I wish I could opt out as well, I know I could do it better on my own! Not to mention, by the time it’s time for me to retire, none of what I’m paying for is going to be there anyway to back me up!

I think a big result of this is because of the hyper-connected world we live in. Politics used occur in two different stages. There was the back room negotiating where each side gave some ground to forge a compromise. The other part was the political grandstanding similar to what you would see in a WWE style match. Since we are more interconnected and see our politicians on camera more often. People grow up thinking that the WWE part is how politics worked and then those people got elected into office.

I can’t help but feel that the underlying problem is being overlooked by most people, the actual size of the US national debt. It seems to be all about constantly raising the debt limit. The Fed has been printing money to fund US spending for years but at some point it will have to come to a crunch point. Is that point now? I don’t know. I do know that you can’t borrow endless amounts of money forever.

Hey Adam, thanks for swinging by. I agree, the bigger picture really is the debt. The US has a credit card with no limit because they can print more money. But, that money is backed by something…what we believe to be gold, but I’m not too sure about that anymore either. What happens when the backing fails to meet the printed money? Inflation! If we look at the monetary system, we start to see that it was built for inflation. That’s a shame in and of itself. None the less, I would love to see our government fix the spending issues instead of raising the invisible ceiling and causing more inflation!

Like past fallen empires (egs., Greek, Roman, British), it is more and more looking like the U.S. “empire” (or, if you prefer: “super power”) is heading in the same direction. The old axiom “United We Stand, Divided We Fall” seems to have been forgotten. Bottom Line: the U.S. government structure is fundamentally flawed and unmanageable.

Hey Rob, thanks for your comment! Bringing up the old United We Stand, Divided We fall huh? I love it. The shame is, as a nation we are divided. We divide our politics, our social groups, our communities. Most of the time, this division is done based on money which is really sad. I hope we don’t fall but as our government and consumers become more and more distant, we’re not going to have much of a choice in the matter!

It’s a really sad state our country is in. I do love being an American, but we’re just so darn opinionated that sometimes it borders on just plain being stupid. I think Congress has definitely crossed that line a long time ago. What’s interesting is that these people are trying to do their jobs and represent their districts…but then they’re taking down our whole country while doing so! It’s so insane. Hopefully this gets fixed soon as every day that passes will make it worse.

Mark and Charles, I agree with you both wholeheartedly! The only reason they’re getting paid is because we voted them in. Lets vote them out next time and bring in members of congress that have a squishy pink thing between their ear holes!

This post hits on a lot of the frustration that so many of us have been feeling this past week. I still find it hard to believe that the shutdown is continuing, but given the children who are running the country right now, I shouldn’t really be surprised.

The left and right paradigm is coming to an crashing end. A third party is what this country needs. There are more individuals out there that identify themselves as being somewhere in the grey area between left and right. The more each side alienates its base to score political points the more and more the people will take notice and start to buck the current system.

Awesome blog by the way. My wife and I spend last year selling everything we owned, paying off $30K in debt, quitting our corporate jobs, and moving to Thailand to simplify our lives. We find it rewarding to help others do the same and always love when we come across other bloggers providing the same sort of motivation.

Great topics! Keep it up 🙂

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Joshua Rodriguez is the owner and founder of CNA Finance.
He is also a partner here at Modest Money. His analysis has been featured on Investing.com, Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance, Google News, and many others.